As a white woman, I write this response to “BlacKkKlansman” out of love and conviction that we must unite to end racism in our county.

In order for us to move forward, we have to face the truth about ourselves and our racist history, and I think “BlacKkKlansman” is a powerful teaching tool.

I highly encourage everyone to see it, although there are some very problematic aspects to the movie.

“BlacKkKlansman” is based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, a Black police officer in Colorado Springs, Colorado who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in 1979, and also contains some fictionalized storylines.

The truths “BlacKkKlansman” tells are extremely important, but the fictionalized parts of it are deceiving and harmful, and I’ve written this essay to make that distinction clear.

Three reasons why “BlacKkKlansman” rules:

1) “BlacKkKlansman” succeeds in drawing a straight line between white people, white supremacy, and the election of Donald Trump, and does so in a very powerful, emotional and unforgettable way.

Many white progressive Americans thought that the election of Barack Obama invoked a post-racial era in America.

But as people of color know, every step forward comes with backlash.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his last book before he was assassinated:

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn. The reality of substantial investment to assist Negroes into the twentieth century, adjusting to Negro neighbors and genuine school integration, is still a nightmare for all too many white Americans. White America would have liked to believe that in the past ten years a mechanism had somehow been created that needed only orderly and smooth tending for the painless accomplishment of change. Yet this is precisely what has not been achieved. (….) These are the deepest causes for contemporary abrasions between the races. Loose and easy language about equality, resonant resolutions about brotherhood fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook. He remembers that with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever-present tendency to backlash.

The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and Trump’s commentary on it was when many white progressive Americans finally woke up.

“BlacKkKlansman”, released on the one-year anniversary of Charlottesville, forcefully holds white people accountable for the election of Donald Trump, evincing a very strong emotional response, particularly among white people.

2) “BlacKkKlansman” dispels the myth that the Ku Klux Klan is exclusively Southern.

Although not widely known, Colorado has ALWAYS been a hotbed of white supremacy. I was born and raised in Colorado, about 120 miles due north of Colorado Springs, the town where “BlacKkKlansman” takes place.

A volunteer Colorado militia of white men massacred, mutilated, and desecrated hundreds of peaceful unsuspecting Native American women children and elderly at Sand Creek in 1854 in an act of barbarism so atrocious, even the Federal government condemned it.

“The Sand Creek Massacre” by Robert Lindneaux portrays his concept of the assault on the peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho village by the U.S. Army.

The Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel and Iron Company guards shot into a camp of 1200 striking miners and their families in 1914, killing two dozen people, including women and children, in Ludlow, Colorado.

A few years later, “The Birth of a Nation,” a black and white movie that portrays the Klan as a heroic force and dehumanizes Black people, was tremendously popular in Colorado and inspired many white people to join the Klan in the 1920s. (Birth of a Nation is the film shown at the Klan induction ceremony in “BlacKkKlansman”).

There were never a whole lot of Black people in Colorado, so in addition to Black people, the Colorado Ku Klux Klan villainized Jews, Catholics and anyone who was not white and Protestant.

Long after the Ku Klux Klan members were no longer in office, the ordinances and practices they established continued to affect communities.

Their intellectual heirs enacted redlining and opposed school integration, resulting in residential and educational segregation- and a racial wealth gap- that persist to this day and is itself a root cause of racism and racial inequality.

Pew Research Center chart on racial wealth gap

Ku Klux Klan members elected to school boards throughout Colorado during the 1920s made curriculum and teacher hiring decisions that continued to impact communities decades later.

I am certain that the white washed, Republican version of US history I was taught growing up was a direct result of Klan influence on my school decades later.

There were only 2 Black students in my high school, and I graduated in 1987.

Women held power in the Klan, disseminating the Klan’s ideology through family, religious, and social events and passing it on to their children. Klansmen elected to school boards ensured their wives were hired as teachers.

Today, white women continue to uphold white supremacy.

“BlacKkKlansman” draws scrutiny to white women and our role in upholding white supremacy.

I hope that it leads white women to look ourselves in the mirror and hold ourselves to account for changing our beliefs and behaviors.

But- and this is a MAJOR but- for all the good it does, “BlacKkKlansman” also is seriously flawed in the way it whitewashes police infiltration of movements and police generally.

This warrants serious conversation, because I already see so many non-Black people watching “BlacKkKlansman” and proclaiming they are now “woke,” but the way the movie portrays police is harmful, inaccurate, and irresponsible.

(L)Lakeith Stanfield as Cassius “Cash” Green in Boots Riley’s “Sorry to Bother You” and (R) John David Washington as Ron Stallworth in Spike Lee’s “Blackkklansman”, two must-see movies.

Two reasons why #BlacKkKlansman is irresponsible:

1. “BlacKkKlansman” portrays Officer Ron Stallworth’s infiltration of a Black power student group as benign, when in reality police infiltration of the Black power movement was immoral, unjust, and destroyed peoples’ lives and the movement.

The first head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, who abused his power, viewed the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and other Black Power organizations as a threat to America and created a program called COINTELPRO to infiltrate these movements with undercover agents to sow division.

That was exactly why Stallworth was sent on this assignment, but instead of exploring this angle, the film fictionalizes a relationship between Officer Stallworth and Patrice Dumas, the President of the Black Student Union at Colorado College who organized the lecture, also a fictionalized character.

In some ways, I appreciate Spike Lee adding Patrice as a fictional character, because she is a strong Black woman leader, and we see too few characters like this in movies.

The storyline of the wife of a Klansman’s fixation on harming Patrice is great for demonstrating the conflict between white women and Black women throughout American history that continues to this day. We need more movies that explore characters like these.

But I wish instead in this movie, Spike Lee would have explored how police infiltration of Black led movements was immoral, racist, and devastating.

My greatest hope is that #Blackkklansman prompts not only a long-overdue national conversation about racism, but also leads white people like me to become accountable and actually change our beliefs and behaviors and pay reparations to the people we have harmed.

Thank you for reading to the end, and I welcome your thoughts and reflections (unless of course you’re going to drag me, in which case, I hope you remember I’m human too 🙂 ).